A secular case against SSM

[_Gadianton]

by the way, I think that Wade is not being exactly consistent in his approach to this topic. He asked,

1. What reasons did governments have to regulate and sanction (i.e. extend the legal right of marriage to) opposite-sex marriages to begin with?

Responding with how present-day legal authorities justify marriage as a legal right for opposite sexes does not answer the above question.

[_Roger Morrison]

Wade, I'm dashed, saddend, disconsolate, doleful, dispirited and downhearted to be so obviously ignored--I'm hurting... What gives Bro???
Roger
*
*

[_JohnStuartMill]

The problems with this are manifold. 1) "Procreation" is obviously not what the government is actually supporting. Any 15-year-old kid can bonk another and make a baby, but this is not something the government should subsidize.

I would think that after someone on your own side of the issue (Eallusion) has had to correct and school you twice now on the same page of this thread, that you would get a hint that you don't know what you are talking about. But, no, your hubris is so prodigious that even in your evident clueless state about law, you think yourself in a position to dismiss the legal reasoning of a federal district judge.

Where did I say that Judge Taylor applied the rational basis standard incorrectly? My point is that the rational basis standard (which, as EAllusion pointed out, is ridiculous easy to meet) shouldn't have been applied in the first place. You haven't engaged that line of argument at all.

Wade, you're not being serious here. The fact that gay marriage bans are legally defensible using a rational basis standard is a far cry from gay marriage bans being morally defensible, or even legally defensible in general. Laws against Mormonism are legally defensible using a rational basis standard, for chrissake. Is this really the stronghold you want to build around gay marriage bans?

Besides, a person would have to be rather daft not to understand that one of the primary funtions, if not THE primary function, of societies and governments is to help assure their own survival and to perpetuate the species, which, to an overwhelming extent throughout the ages has been made possible through procreation.

Another primary government function is to encourage community and familial stability, which gay marriage clearly promotes. There's clearly more societal benefit from heterosexual marriage than simple baby-makin'; otherwise, the government should have rescinded marriage benefits to elderly and otherwise non-productive couples, which is easily as big a source of "wasted" marriage benefits as a few hundred thousand gay couples.

2) There is insufficient evidence to say that heterosexual unions actually are the "optimal union for procreation", and significant evidence that other kinds of unions are just as good.

Not surprisingly, the legislatures in at least 39 states as well as the federal government, and the judges in all but a handful of the 91 court cases on SSM, disagree with you.

LOL. "Not surprisingly, 99.5% of the Earth's population disagrees with Mormonism." Why is one an argumentum ad populum, but not the other?

Also, the court cases regarding SSM rarely contemplate the quality of evidence supporting the idea that heterosexual unions are uniquely conducive to child-rearing.

[_EAllusion]

Yes, it really is a state interest, and no, I am not looking at this in an oddly authoritarian way. I am thinking in terms of government "of the people, by the people, for the people". Perhaps you have heard of this? I am also speaking of the notion as it is legally understood (see legal definition of State Interest).

1) While you might be defining "the state" as "the people" in this reply, you clearly were not doing so before. How do I know this? Well, you exchanged "the state" with "the government" on ~ five occasions in the same post and developed an argument entirely in terms of what serves government interest, which is not necessarily coextensive with the interest of the people or "state interest" in this sense.

2) Rights do not exist to secure the interests of the government. The government exists to secure the rights and welfare of the people. If you've seen the light and agree with this now, bully for you, but your entire argument above was predicated on the reverse. You were demanding classes of people justify why recognizing their contracts, any contracts, are a beneficial to the interests of the government on a case by case basis. This is in opposition to the reverse position which is the government being forced to justify why it won't mediate and/or recognize contractual relationships between some classes of people. If you don't agree that equality before the law promotes the aggregate good, that's a separate argument, but I think you do. In which case, the argument is really just over whether the government has a good (read: morally justified) reason to discriminate in this case. Happily, you think it does. But this aspect of the argument was just getting to understanding the onus.

With SSM, the courts have near unanimously ruled that no right is being abridged by limiting legal marriage to opposite-sex couples. Again, while same-sex couples, or incestuous couples, or children couples, or adult and child couples, or adults and animal or plant couples, are all free to consider themselves married and to enter into a marital contract, they do not have a right to obligate the state to sanction their marital contracts. Only the state has a right to determine constitutionally what type of marital contracts it will contractually agree to sanction, and this according to state interest.

I thought you were interested in arguing that disallowing civil marriage for gays (or maintaining the general status quo if you prefer) is the most proper state of affairs. If you instead are interested in arguing that is constitutional - that is not in violation of constitutional rights -, you need to clarify. After all, not everything the state has the constitutional right to do is the best thing for the state to do.

[_EAllusion]

Also, the court cases regarding SSM rarely contemplate the quality of evidence supporting the idea that heterosexual unions are uniquely conducive to child-rearing.

Gay adoption is where that question is addressed more directly to the extent its. And gay adoption tends to enjoy more legal success than gay marriage does. But that's beside the point. If anyone wants to assert that those who oppose gay marriage politically are just concluding that same sex marriages do not provide an optimal procreation and child-rearing environment - in way that is distinct from poor people not providing an optimal child-rearing environment - they are totally up in the night. Courts are just considering if this is allowable, not if it is the best course of legislative action. Voters usually have a lot more on their plate, not the least of which is obstinate prejudice gays have historically faced.

The appeal to popular support doesn't even really work in the way it was used here.

[_EAllusion]

By the way, here's the discussion I mentioned before:

http://pacumenispages.yuku.com/forum/viewtopic/id/7241

There's nothing Wade hasn't argued here that I haven't addressed there, so I'll stand by that.

[_beastie]

There's nothing Wade hasn't argued here that I haven't addressed there, so I'll stand by that.

This is exactly why I won't engage with Wade on this issue. I've seen him engage in the same discussion, with very minor variations, repeatedly over the years. Each time, at least a couple of posters are willing to interact seriously with his points, but he remains completely impervious to this interaction. It is clear that his opposition to homosexual behavior, including same sex marriage, was formulated in response to something that has nothing to do with legal matters or even reason. There is another reason for his opposition, one that is left unstated for the same reason that anti-evolutionists talk about "intelligent design" instead of "God".

Of course, all human beings tend to form opinions and beliefs in a manner that is usually outside conscious reasoning and logic, and we simply construct justifications for those beliefs later. We even convince ourselves that the post-constructed justifications truly are our "reasons", but they're not. It's just usually not as obvious as in Wade's case.

What I find particularly amusing about his case is how, each time he initiates this conversation yet one more time, he always acts as if opponents are afraid to tackle his stellar reasoning and logic. He acts as if he isn't "surprised" that people are reticent to deal with his points, because, you know, it's so obvious that he's right. The reality is that people are reticent to deal with his points because his history is so clear on this matter, that anyone who knows him knows, in advance, what the end result will be. Wade remains impervious to the solid points of the opposition, and engages in his version of a victory dance.

Honestly, I think Wade is really trying to convince himself, not us.

[_asbestosman]

By the way, here's the discussion I mentioned before:

http://pacumenispages.yuku.com/forum/viewtopic/id/7241

The link isn't working for me:

404 error message
Sorry this forum was not found.

Do I need to sign up or something?

[_Daniel2]

Wade,

Given your vigorious defense of the importance of "traditional marriage," can you explain why an active Mormon male in his mid fifties would remain unmarried and unprocreative?

Can you explain how the "single status" of such individuals provides any meaningful benefit to society?

Darin